Category: Governance

Alphabet Inc.’s Google has been penalized yet again by European antitrust regulators, this time with a €1.49 billion ($1.7 billion) fine for limiting how some websites could display ads sold by its rivals. This marks the third billion-dollar penalty European regulators have imposed on the tech giant for hindering competition. The EU says that Google …

South Africa is 10 days away from new data regulations – with mobile customers soon to be spared from out of bundle charges, unless they choose to opt in. The amended End User and Subscriber Services Charter (EUSSC) Regulations will come into effect on 1 March, which will prevent mobile operators from automatically charging out …

Security Researcher Elliot Anderson has discovered a huge leak of Aadhaar numbers from Indane’s website as well as app. The leak has put Aadhaar number of 6.7 million people at stake. According to a report from TechCrunch, Indane Gas has apparently leaked the data of around 6.7 million subscribers through its website and app. The …

After protests broke out over a sharp fuel price hike this week, Zimbabwe’s government ordered a three-day internet shutdown — with police also firing tear gas at demonstrators from a helicopter and arresting dozens. According to NetBlocks, which estimates the cost of internet shutdowns worldwide, the three-day outage could cost the country’s already shaky economy …

The internet today isn’t what Tim Berners-Lee pictured when he invented the World Wide Web nearly three decades ago. In a talk at the opening of the Web Summit in Lisbon on Monday, the inventor of the web called on governments, companies and individuals to back a new “Contract for the Web” that aims to …

A new report out this week shows that China is by far the most effective censor of the internet, and far from retreating, is exporting its model around the world. Beijing has consistently defied all the confident predictions (including by people far more knowledgeable about the internet than Clinton) that this would be impossible. China’s …

Brussels has warned Facebook it will face sanctions unless it changes what the European commission calls its “misleading” terms and conditions. The EU commissioner in charge of consumer protection, Věra Jourová, said she had run out of patience with the social network after nearly two years of discussions aimed at giving Facebook’s European users more …

The European Parliament has approved a controversial copyright law that threatens to ‘destroy the internet as we know it’, according to digital rights groups. Yesterday, in a vote that split almost every major EU party, Members of the European Parliament adopted every terrible proposal in the new Copyright Directive and rejected every good one, setting the …

India’s controversial biometric database, Aadhaar, has been once again compromised, according to a three-month investigation launched by HuffPost India. In a report published Tuesday, HuffPost revealed the existence of a malicious patch said to disable critical security features, making it easier not only to create unauthorized Aadhaar numbers but to fool the system’s biometric recognition …

The debate over the effects of artificial intelligence has been dominated by two themes. One is the fear of a singularity, an event in which an AI exceeds human intelligence and escapes human control, with possibly disastrous consequences. The other is the worry that a new industrial revolution will allow machines to disrupt and replace …